Searching for Words – Poems

The Palestine Chronicle is pleased to feature the work of two poets, Samah Sabawai and Jehan Bseiso.

Searching for Words

By Samah Sabawi

Gaza…I search desperatelyFor words… for definitionsTo tell the story of ammunitionsExploding in a child’s bodyI try to shout my indignationBut I am lost in vocabulary Drowned in phrases as old as meAnd I am as old as the OccupationI need new words

How hard it is to find

Definitions that can restore

Humanity to a small strip of land

Along the Mediterranean shore

Siege, starvation collective misery

Familiar words in my head they linger

Bombs fall from the sky every day

Powerless words I can’t use any longer

I need new words

“Palestine is occupied….”These are now hollow words…“Palestinians are oppressed…”These are now daily words…“Palestinians are dispossessed”These are now…tired words“Palestinians….have a right to exist”Words often spoken…worn out wordsI need new words

Gaza…my home cityMy earliest memory of Jasmine flowers and meramiah teaMy first taste of sour lemon dipped in saltMy first climb on an almond treeGaza, my destinyMy father’s heart sky and seaMy mother’s first loveMy sister’s first breathMy pride and dignity

At curious four I asked my mother why Superman did not speak the same language I didShe told me thatOur cartoon hero is a little boy forever tenHis hands clasped behind his back, invisible handcuffs

She told me I had to learn another alphabet, another geography,In the Big Yellow Atlas, for kids, full of picturesWe stenciled in your awkward shape into maps that didn’t even want youWe had to learn your name in their language

They told me I spoke funny. So I rinsed my accent at school; madraseh instead of madrasaI read about diaspora and exile and power structuresWithout knowing what they meant

So you’re American? On paperAnd Jordan? Is what I knowAnd Gaza? An old wives taleWe are bastard children of hyphens and supplements and sentences that start with Originally I’m from…

At home, Baba counted in dead bodies, in ratios, and for breakfast we hadNostalgia and symbolsWe read Kanafani, Darwiche and SaidWhen we found tonguesWe learned to speak from the margins of pages,From the periphery

Maybe this is Freud’s “oceanic feeling”.A veritable storehouse in the unconscious To be from a place and not know the placeThere are simpler ways of being in the world, I’m told.Still I choose Za’tar and Shatta and this awkward Fatha.

– Jehan Bseiso, American born Palestinian-Jordanian poet, has recently completed her Masters thesis in Literature from the American University of Beirut. She is now working with Doctors Without Borders in Amman, Jordan. You can contact her on: jehan.bseiso@gmail.com.

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